Besides using CRON to hit that particular event table, is there any other method I am not thinking of that can be used with PHP? I want to check that event table every 5 minutes.
If this is on a Web site, can you not just check the database everytime a user hits a page in the site rather than "scheduling" it to run every 5 minutes to do the checking. In effect, if no one's hitting the site, then it doesn't matter whether it's being displayed, but when someone hits a page in your site, then that's a perfect time to check the date and then display whatever you want to display based on the date.
-Ben